Food products such as Ready-To-Eat ("R-T-E") cereals and snack products vary widely in composition, shape, color, flavor, texture, etc. Such products can include both puffed and unpuffed varieties. One attractive feature is their appearance which can include specific attributes such as shape and coloration. Especially attractive are products having a complex but organized pattern of coloration, shape and/or complex shape.
A wide variety of techniques are known to provide complexly shaped products such as rings, stars, letters, figures, etc. Problems generally include how to provide consistently the desired degree of shape detail or resolution in the finished pieces. Similarly, for colored products, a problem is how to consistently provide a fine level of detail. This problem of imparting a fine level of detail is particularly difficult in the provision of complexly patterned R-T-E cereals due to their generally smaller size. The problem is even more severe for puffed R-T-E cereal products due to the very tiny size of the pellets that are expanded to form the finished products. Of course, the pellets must contain and retain the complex pattern.
In particular, it would be desirable to prepare puffed R-T-E cereals having a shape and color pattern reminiscent of various sports balls such as baseballs, footballs, basketballs and soccer balls, such as are disclosed in 1) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 014,233, filed Oct. 18, 1993 by Laughlin et al. entitled Food Product Piece, now U.S. Pat. No. Des 373,671, 2) 014,068, filed Oct. 12, 1993 by Laughlin entitled Food Product Piece, 3) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 014,474, filed Oct. 22, 1993 by Laughlin entitled Food Product Piece, now U.S. Pat. No. Des 368,791 issued Apr. 16, 1996 and 4) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 014,069, filed Oct. 12, 1993 by Laughlin entitled Food Product Piece, now U.S. Pat. No. Des 372,352 respectively, each of which are incorporated herein by reference. Such products are characterized in part by high degrees of resolution such as by line features (such as to indicate traditional sticking patterns) 1 mm&gt; in thickness and even 0.5 mm&gt;. Providing a cereal pellet which upon puffing provides a puffed R-T-E cereal exhibiting such a fineness of detail is a difficult problem to overcome.
Line colored or externally striped food products such as R-T-E cereals as well as apparatus and methods for their preparation are described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,858,217 entitled Cereal Product With Striped Effect and Method of Making Same (issued Oct. 28, 1958 to J. O. Benson) and which is incorporated herein by reference. The '217 patent describes an extrudate extruder having a color injecting die insert for making a complexly patterned extrudate. However, the extrudate is directly extruded without any reduction in its cross sectional area. Also, the method appears to be limited to producing only flakes in a simple pattern of generally parallel more or less straight lines. The method is not capable of generating a direct expanded cereal or snack (i.e., expanded directly from the extruder) having a line detail of such a degree of fineness.
An improvement or modification in the technique for providing a line colored cereal based snack piece is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,447,931 (issued Jun. 3, 1969 also to Benson et al.) entitled Process For Preparing a Puffed, Concave Shaped Cereal Product. More particularly, the '931 patent describes a process for making a cup flower shaped R-T-E cereal piece having a complex line pattern. The process involves extruding a plurality of rope dough filaments which are pressed together to form a column or rope without a material decrease in the cross section which is then combined under conditions such that no puffing occurs. The composite strand of compressed filaments is then cut into wafers and which are subsequently heat puffed. While useful, the process appears to be limited to producing only the "flower bloom" shape. Also, the pieces prepared are of a larger snack piece size rather than the relatively smaller pieces characteristic of R-T-E cereals.
Especially in commercial applications, the plastic extrudable food product is supplied in an amount to form a plurality of extrudates. Problems then arise that extrudates have uniformity of flow for consistency in the final product, with adjustment of the flow rate and pressure being accomplished without increasing the likelihood of downstream plugging. Furthermore, problems also arise that the extrudates interfere with each other such as by falling on top of each other thereby making downstream processing difficult.
In a first aspect, the present invention provides an improvement in apparatus and methods for preparing food products characterized by at least two colors in an organized pattern. In particular, the present invention provides an improvement in the degree of fineness level of color detail (1 mm&gt;) even on food products such as pellets for puffed R-T-E cereals that are very small (e.g., 3 to 6 mm) in diameter.
In a further aspect, the present invention provides a flow rate adjustment apparatus for adjustment of plastic extrudable food flow. In particular, the present invention provides an improvement that the flow of dough is not stopped or allowed to build up which can lead to hardening of the dough, with hardened dough potentially causing plugging problems downstream.
In another aspect, the present invention provides a manifold where the extrudates are located in a non-circular pattern avoiding the problems of individual extrudates interfering with each other and allowing easier placement on horizontally arranged conveyors. In particular, the present invention provides an improvement that the extrudates are in a horizontal pattern in a single plane.